They had only scant moments left. No more line lay within Seadreamer's reach. He tried to slide himself toward the first spar, where the shrouds were plentiful; but the effort took him farther into the direct turbulence of the gale. Before he had covered half the distance, the blast became too strong for him. He had to hunch over Covenant, cling to the stone with all his limbs, in order to keep the two of them from being torn away into the night.
Ceer's pouch was emptied before he gained Foodfendhall. He was forced to stop. No one could reach the housing.
Honninscrave barked commands. At once, the nearer oil-laden Giant stopped, secured her footing, then threw her pouches forward, one after the other. The first flew to the Master as he positioned himself immediately behind Ceer. The second arced over them to hit and burst against the edge of the roof. Oil splashed down the wall. Flames cleared away the eels. Rapidly, the surviving remnant of the attack was erased from the afterdeck.
Honninscrave snapped instructions at Ceer. Ceer ducked around behind the Giant, climbed his back like a tree while Honninscrave crossed the last distance to the wall. From the Master's shoulders, Ceer leaped to the roof, then turned to catch the pouch Honninscrave tossed upward.
Flames leaped as Ceer began spewing oil at the eels.
With a lunge, Honninscrave caught at the edge of the roof. In spite of the oil, his fingers held, defying failure as he flipped himself over the eaves. Giants threw the last two pouches up to him. Clutching one by the throat in each hand, he crouched under the gale and followed Ceer.
Linden could not see what was happening. Foodfendhall blocked the base of the mast from her view. But the red flaring across Brinn's fiat visage as he retreated was the crimson of eel-light, not the orange-and-yellow of flames.
A moment later, his retreat carried him into the grasp of the wind.
He tottered. With all his strength and balance, he resisted; but the hurricane had him, and its savagery was heightened by the way it came boiling past the lee of the roof. He could not save himself from falling.
He lashed out at the eels as he dropped. Simultaneously, he pitched himself back toward Seadreamer. His blow struck an attacker away. Its power outlined him against the night like a lightning-burst of pain.
Then a pouch flashed into view, cast from Ceer or Honninscrave to Seadreamer. Fighting the wind, Seadreamer managed to raise his arms, catch the oilskin. Pumping the pouch under his elbow, he squeezed a gush of oil down the mast.
The eel-light turned to fire. Flames immersed the mast, fell in burning gouts of oil and blazing creatures toward the sea.
Linden heard a scream that made no sound. Yowling in frustration, the Raver fled. Its malefic presence burst and vanished, freeing her like an escape from suffocation.
The illumination of eels and oil revealed Brinn. He hung from one of Seadreamer's ankles, twitching and capering helplessly. But in spite of seizures and wind which tossed him from side to side like a puppet, his grip held.
The oil burned away rapidly. Already, the afterdeck had relapsed into the darkness of the storm-night assuaged only by a few faint lanterns. Ceer and Honninscrave were soon able to ascend the mast.
Moored by a rope to Honninscrave, Ceer hung below the mast and swung himself outward until he could reach Brinn. Hugging his kinsman, he let Honninscrave haul the two of them back to relative safety. Then the Master went to aid his brother.
With Covenant supported between them, a link more intimate and binding than birth, Honninscrave and Seadreamer crept down out of the wind.
Linden could hardly believe that they had survived, that the Raver had been defeated. She felt at once faint with relief and exhaustion, fervid to have Covenant near her again, to see if he had been harmed.
He and his rescuers were out of sight beyond the edge of Foodfendhall. She could not bear to wait. But she had to wait. Struggling for self-possession, she went to examine Pitchwife, the First, and Hergrom.
They were recovering well. The two stricken Giants appeared to have suffered no lingering damage. The First was already strong enough to curse the loss of her sword; and Pitchwife was muttering as if he were bemused by the fool-hardiness with which he had charged the eels. Their Giantish immunity to burns had protected them.
Beside them, Hergrom seemed both less and more severely hurt. He had not lost consciousness; his mind had remained clear. But the twitching of his muscles was slow to depart. Apparently, his resistance to the eel-blast had prolonged its effect upon him. His limbs were steady for the most part, but the corners of his face continued to wince and tick like an exaggerated display of trepidation.
Perhaps, Linden thought as if his grimacing were an augury, perhaps the Raver had not been defeated. Perhaps it had simply learned enough about the condition of Covenant and the quest and had gone to inform Lord Foul.
Then she turned to meet the return of Ceer and Bruin, Honninscrave and Seadreamer. With the Unbeliever.
They came carefully along the lifelines. Like Hergrom, Brinn suffered from erratic muscular spasms. But they were receding. Seadreamer was sorely weary after his struggles; but his solid form showed no other hurt.
Honninscrave carried Covenant. At the sight, Linden's eyes filled with tears. She had never been able to control the way her orbs misted and ran at any provocation; and now she did not try. Covenant was unchanged-as empty of mind or will as an abandoned crypt. But he was safe. Safe. When the Master set him down, she went to him at once. Though she was unacquainted with such gestures, perhaps had no right to them, she put her arms around him and did not care who saw the fervour of her embrace.
But the night was long and cold, and the storm still raved like all fury incarnate. Starfare's Gem skidded in a mad rush along the seas, tenuously poised between life and death. There was nothing anybody could do except clinch survival and hope. In the bone-deep shivers which wracked her, the weariness which enervated her limbs so thoroughly that even diamondraught scarcely palliated it, Linden was surprised to find that she was as capable of hope as the Giants,
Their spirit seemed to express its essence in Honninscrave, who bore the command of the ship as if Starfare's Gem itself were indomitable. At Shipsheartthew, Galewrath no longer appeared too frozen by duty to meet the strain. Rather, her great arms gripped the spokes as if she were more indefeasible than the very storm. Brinn and Hergrom had recovered their characteristic imperviousness. The dromond lived. Hope was possible.
Yet when dawn came at last, Linden had fallen so far into bare knotted endurance that the sun took her by surprise. Stupefied by exhaustion, she did not know which astonished her more-the simple return of day, unlooked-for after the interminable battery of that night, or the fact that the sky was free of clouds.
She could hardly credit her eyes. Covered by the vessel's lee, she had not noticed that the rain had stopped sometime during the night. Now the heavens macerated from purple to blue as the sun appeared almost directly behind the Giantship's stern. The clouds were gone as if they had been worn away by the incessant tearing of the wind. And yet the gale continued to blow, unabated and unappeased.
Blinking weakly, she scanned her companions. They looked unnaturally distinct in the clear air, like men and women who had been whetted by stress to a keener edge, a sharper existence. Their apparel was rimed and crusted with salt: it marked their faces like the desiccated masks of their mortality, drifted in powder from the opening and closing of hands, the bending of arms, the shifting of positions. Yet they moved. They spoke hoarsely to each other, flexed the cramps out of their muscles, cast raw and gauging glances at the sea. They were alive.